PLACE AS CHARACTER, FALL 2019
“People Like That Are the Only People Here” by Lorrie Moore (New Yorker, fiction)
“The Fourth State of Matter” by Joann Beard (New Yorker, essay)
“Feathers” by Raymond Carver (UCLA reprint, fiction)
“Two Things” by Daniel Woodrell (Barcelona Review, fiction)
“A Short Distance from the Mountains” by Jeff Hardin (Blue Lyra Review, poem)
“Sun Dogs” by Dorthe Nors, translated by Misha Hoekstra (New Yorker, fiction)
“The Smell” by Ruth Mukwana (Solstice Magazine)
“Bonesaw” from Whip and Spur by Iver Arnegard (fiction excerpt)
BREVITY, SPRING 2019
"Cussword ABC’s" Keith Lesmeister, Tin House Flash Fidelity (NF)
"Legs" Libby Flores, Tin House Flash Friday (F)
“A Girl Goes Into the Forest” Peg Alford Purcell, Waxwing (F)
“Identity Theft (Side B)” Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Brevity (accumulation, NF)
“Cubist Mother” Michelle Ross, 100 Word Stories (F)
“California Fruit” Meg Progress, Smokelong (F)
“I Have Not Pushed Back My Cuticles with an Orange Stick Since the Nixon Administration” Kathy Fish, Monkeybicycle (F)
“Bather, Alone” Joni Tevis (NF in sections)
Websites to Check Out re: Brevity, Flash, etc.
Brevity (nonfiction, reviews, craft essays)
Smokelong (primarily F)
A bunch of Freytag’s Triangles for you
Chicago Manual Proofreader’s Marks
MVPL WORKSHOPS
"Stages" by Agatha French, Gigantic (mixing past and present tense)
"Legs" Libby Flores, Tin House Flash Friday (projecting forward)
"Just Leave the Damn Thing Open" Joanne Nelson, Museum of Americana (time switches in memoir, present tense for continuing condition, writing youth from afar)
"In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried" Amy Hempel, Fictionaut (radical unmarked time jumps, present tense used for events of the past)
"Gimme That Old Time Nostalgia: Memories of Remembering" Peter Birkenhead, Huffington Post (On memory and nostalgia)
"Of mice and murder, and Ronald Reagan" Peter Birkenhead, Salon (viewing the past with the knowledge of the present, eras woven together with minimal markers)
"I Feel Like I Live in Somebody Else’s Body" Emily John-Slate, Racked (jumps in time and subject without marked segues, present tense to mark true present, projecting forward)
"The Wind that Shakes the Sage" Iver Arnegard, Tishman Review (present, conditional, and past tenses; time jumps, fractured narrative)
"Chef's House" by Raymond Carver (cauterized back story-->keeps story in the present)
"Loving, Hating, Being from Texas" Corina Zappia, Catapult (braided essay)
"A Salvage-Yard Reunion" Haili Jones Graff, Tishman Review, page 117 (sweeping time frame, writing youth with adult voice and POV)
"A History of Heartbeats" Tori Malcangio, Passages North (fragmented, jumps back-and-forth in time)
"Steer" Jolene McIlwane Prime Number (foreshadowing within a flashback)
Craft Essay
"Memory and Imagination" by Patricia Hampl
Books Discussed
Stop-Time by Frank Conroy (writing the past/what I know now problem)
The Distant Marvels by Chantel Acevedo (story-within-a-story)
So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (writing the past w/ adult voice, but maintaining youthful "blinders")
The Liar's Club by Mary Karr (writing childhood events w/o full reveal)
Ulysses by James Joyce (slow time)
Anything by the Brontes, Henry James, Jane Austen (classic time)
Quotes, Miscellany
"Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out." Samuel Johnson
"Write from the heart and don’t fear your own strangeness." Frances Gapper